Icarus

Saturday morning I was playing the bachelor waiting for my wife to return from a trip, so I decided to get up early and try to do some bird photography.  I had not been out to our local nature park on the Chesapeake Bay this year so I decided to go out there in hopes of finding some Sanderlings or maybe even a few straggler plovers.  Low tide was just 30 minutes after sunrise so maybe I could get some good birds in good light.  Plus a storm had moved through Friday night and it was much cooler.  Sounded Great.  Unfortunately it was very hazy and humid, the biting flies were out in force and there were no sandpipers of any kind.  So I spent about an hour practicing getting terns and Ospreys in flight and diving while backlit.  Didn't make for great photos but it was useful practice.  I kept my camera in continuous focus, AI Servo on a Canon, while the birds flew by but once they started to hover in preparations to dive I would release the autofocus button (I use back button focus so I have control over it) and hope they stayed the same distance away as they dove.  That was a pretty good assumption and I didn't have to worry about the camera picking up something in the background to focus on or reacquiring focus if I lost the bird in the frame.
I did manage to get this series of an Osprey taking off after a dive that was decent. 

But the best was this "accident."  I was following the Osprey in the lens and didn't realize it was getting so close to the sun.  But I love the ephemeral feeling to it.

And it reminds me of the myth of Icarus who ignored his father's instructions not to fly too close to the sun.  When Icarus did, his wings, made of wax and feathers, melted and Icarus feel to his death.  But admit it, if you had wings wouldn't you fly too close to the sun?
Have a great day and enjoy some truly great bird photos at Tuesday's Tweets and Wild Bird Wednesday.

Catching up with flowers

I decided to go back in time this week for Macro Monday and pick some of favorites from the past.  A few are pretty recent and some are several years old.  

A few months ago I was preparing to go out to take some pictures when it started raining.  I delayed a little bit to let it pass and then went to get the "standard" water-on-petal pictures.  Although bordering on cliché, I really liked this one.  The flower is a purple Clematis that my wife has trained along the fence in the front garden.  The whole plant was in bloom creating an explosion of purple.  There was just enough light to highlight the petal while keeping the background quite dark.

 I'm not sure what type of flower this is, my wife is out right now and she is the garden expert, but it has a mound of this white star flowers. [She just returned and told me it is an Amsonia; thanks hon.] Similar to the Clematis above, I like how the limited light highlights the main subject.  I usually don't have the foresight to design that into my photographs but sure appreciate when it happens.  All of the vignetting is natural.

This is a rose bud from a native rose that is growing in our side garden.  The flowers are small, flat flowers but they have a wonderful scent.   If you look closely you can see little spikes coming over the green parts.  I'm sure there are technical terms for the bulge at the bottom of the bud and the covering.  Again, I'm sure my wife would know. I only wish I had caught that the back bud was up against the frame as there was room at the bottom to make a small adjustment.  I was probably just being careless.  Or this might be a good reason to use a tripod.  I don't remember if I did or not.  But I find that when handholding the camera it tends to drop slightly when I press the shutter button.  I have less of a problem with my DSLR but I went through a period where I was constantly cutting things off  at the top of the frame with my point-and-shoot camera.  I have a wonderful picture from Brussels of a full moon breaking through clouds behind St. Katherine's church that is partially ruined by having too much of the surrounding square and not the top of the steeple. 

 This native Columbine was taken last year on a trip to the Shenandoah Mountains. It was terribly foggy all weekend so I didn't get any mountain landscape pictures like I had hoped for but I was able to get a few good flowers and some great mushrooms.  

And finally this pink Poppy is from our front garden.  The year of  this photo we had a lot of poppies growing in this bed.  They looked really good with the Chamomile behind it.  Over the past couple of years they have been losing out to larkspurs.  I like the paper-thin petals of the poppies.  And the buds are quite cool in their own right.  The flowers come from large buds that grow up on tall, but thin, stems.  The stem hooks over letting the bud just hang there until it is ready to open.  And then everything stands upright and you get beautiful flowers like this.

I hope you have a great week and be sure to check out the other photos are Monday Macro.

Great Blue Heron

As you can guess from the title of my blog, and my introductory post, if you read it, Great Blue Herons are one of my favorite birds and a key instigator in my enjoyment of bird watching.  So it was a great joy this past weekend when I came across this heron that was busy feeding.  I had joined the semi-monthly bird walk with our bird club at Newport New Park.  We were just a few minutes into the first stop and it was turning out to be a pretty quite morning.  We were a small group with a few new watchers who where discussing the differences between Great Egrets and Snowy Egrets.  I wandered around the corner to get a better look at the reservoir to see if there was more to be seen; the egret discussion was being well handled already.  Just beyond the tall grasses at the water's edge I saw this heron waiting patiently as only herons can.  I like this particular picture where you can see the resting female Mallard to the right.  There is a nice echo in how they are holding their heads.
As I waited the heron saw some food in the water and started trying to scare it up.  The heron took several stabs at the poor prey, then whipped it around and dropped it only to start the cycle again.

By this time the rest of the group had caught up but the heron keep on working on it's breakfast.

The heron finally stopped hunting.  We weren't sure it it had eaten the meal or not.  And eventually it flew off and right past us.
I was able to zoom in on one of the pictures and see what it was trying to catch.  We had thought it was a frog but it now looks like a large fishing lure.  Glad he wasn't hurt by it.

Enjoy the other bird photographs at Tuesday's Tweets (also a Great Blue Heron; I didn't know until just now) and Wild Bird Wednesday.